Reclaiming History (119 page)

Robert Groden, the self-proclaimed photography expert and Zapruder film guru, told readers of
Rolling Stone
magazine, “Unfortunately for the Commission, not one man in this entire country could duplicate the incredible feat attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald, who was, according to his Marine Corps records, ‘a rather poor shot.’ The Commission hired some of the nation’s best marksmen, gave them every advantage, and they still couldn’t duplicate the shots.”
¹⁹⁴

In the first place, Oswald’s Marine Corps records do not show he was a “rather poor shot” and a “joke” as a marksman. To the contrary, as set forth earlier in this book, on December 21, 1956, during Oswald’s most important shooting for the record, he fired a 212 out of a possible 250, which qualified him as a sharpshooter.
¹⁹⁵
Even when he was about to leave the corps, and his good or poor marksmanship could no longer help or hurt him in his Marine Corps career, on May 6, 1959, he fired a 191, which still qualified him as a marksman.
¹⁹⁶
*
And we know from Marina that during Oswald’s time in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, she frequently saw him dry-firing his Carcano.
¹⁹⁷
And in Dallas that year he told her he practiced firing the rifle at Love Field and at a shooting range.
¹⁹⁸
Indeed, Oswald’s friend George de Mohrenschildt told the Warren Commission that Marina, in referring to Oswald, said, “That crazy idiot is target shooting all the time,” and that Oswald himself had told him, “I go out and do target shooting. I like target shooting.”
¹⁹⁹

Second, even a cursory review of the record on this issue shows the charges of Groden and others in the conspiracy community to be false. As alluded to in the introduction, way back in 1964 the Warren Commission had three expert riflemen fire Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle at stationary targets (head and shoulder silhouettes) located at distances of 175, 240, and 265 feet, the distances of 175 and 265 feet corresponding to the distances from the sniper’s nest window to the presidential limousine at Z frames 210 and 313, respectively. The fact that the targets were stationary does not quite warrant the criticism the Commission has gotten from critics like Groden, since the critical point in trying to simulate what Oswald did was to compel the riflemen to move the muzzle between shots. And since the targets were
separated
from each other, the riflemen would have to move their muzzles in the same way they would have if the target were moving as Oswald’s target was. Even given this, however, it would seem to be easier to fire at stationary rather than at moving targets, although as we have seen, the 3.9-degree declination of Elm Street made it less difficult. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that none of the riflemen had any practice with Oswald’s rifle except to operate the bolt for about “two or three minutes,” and did not have any practice with the trigger at all because of concern “about breaking the firing pin.”

In any event, the best rifleman, one “Specialist Miller,” got off three shots (using the telescopic sight) within 4.6 seconds on the first of two series of three shots, and within 5.15 seconds on his second series. Using the iron sights, he got off three rounds in 4.45 seconds. (The second and third riflemen, using only the telescopic sight, took 6.75 and 6.45, and 8.25 and 7.00 seconds, respectively, for the two series.) As for the accuracy, the Warren Commission’s witness, Ronald Simmons, who interpreted the scoring for the Commission, was unprepared for his testimony, and therefore his answers could have been much clearer, part of the lack of clarity being his jumping from the telescopic to the iron sights without clear demarcation.

Question by Warren Commission counsel: “What was the accuracy of Specialist Miller?”

Simmons: “I do not have his accuracy separated from the group.”

Question: “Is it possible to separate the accuracy out?”

Answer: “Yes, it is, by an additional calculation…Mr. Miller succeeded in hitting the third target on both attempts with the telescope. He missed the second target on both attempts with the telescope [he makes no reference to the first target], but he hit the second target with the iron sight. And he emplaced all three rounds on the…first target.”

In the last sentence, he’s presumably (though his language is too sloppy to be sure) talking about Miller’s use of the iron sights. But when Simmons was asked the follow-up question, “How did he [Miller] do with the iron sight on the third target?” he responded, “On the third target he missed the boards completely.”
²⁰⁰
(The other two marksmen hit the first target, missed the second, and both of them, it can be inferred from loose testimony, hit the third.) It appears, though it is by no means crystal clear from Simmons’s imprecise language, that using the iron sights, Miller hit two out of the three targets, the same as Oswald. What
can
be clearly inferred from the information is that Oswald’s rifle was certainly capable of being fired three times within as short a period as 4.45 seconds with the iron sights and 4.6 seconds with the telescopic sight, both of which are more than three full seconds less than we know Oswald had.

It should be added that in an example of investigative sloppiness, the three experts who test-fired for the Warren Commission did so from atop a thirty-foot tower, less than half the height of the sixth-floor window from Elm Street below. I have been told by firearms experts that this difference in elevation was inconsequential to the validity of the tests, but why not construct a tower as high as the sixth-floor window from which to fire?

Three years later, as part of a four-part television special hosted by Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather from June 25 to 28, 1967, CBS improved on the Warren Commission’s simulation. Although CBS investigators did not use Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano (they used an identical model), they used a tower and target track constructed to match exactly the heights, distances, and angles in Dealey Plaza. Also, the target, a standard FBI silhouette, moved by electric motors at eleven miles an hour, approximately the speed of the presidential limousine. “Eleven volunteer marksmen” were given time to practice with the Mannlicher-Carcano at a nearby practice range and then each took turns firing clips of three bullets at the moving target. All using a telescopic sight, which we know is slower than the iron sights, the average time of the eleven riflemen to fire three shots was 5.6 seconds, much faster than the 8.4 seconds we know Oswald had. And one rifleman hit two out of three targets (Oswald’s accuracy) in “slightly less than five seconds.” A weapons engineer had the best score, making three out of three hits in 5.2 seconds, meaning he was operating the bolt and firing accurately every 1.7 seconds, clearly besting Oswald’s marksmanship on November 22, 1963.
²⁰¹
*

This should have forever put to rest the argument by conspiracy theorists that no one has ever duplicated what Oswald did, yet hundreds of books have come out since the 1967 CBS demonstration alleging that very thing, conditioning millions of Americans to believe the allegation.

To repeat, because it is so important, what everyone seems to forget is that Oswald qualified as a sharpshooter in the Marines, firing a score of 212. Much more importantly to the issues in this case, for some curious reason Oswald was an even better shot when rapid firing. In an analysis of Oswald’s targets and score cards when he fired his M-1 rifle during several days in December of 1956,
²⁰²
my London trial firearms expert, Monty Lutz, found that Oswald fired better in rapid than in slow fire.
†
For instance, at two hundred yards (six hundred feet, well over twice as far away as Kennedy was on November 22, 1963, when Oswald fired the last shot, the head shot), his proficiency rate, Lutz said, averaged “76 percent slow fire,
but 91 percent rapid fire
.” Lutz said that “some shooters are better at firing rapid or timed courses once they get into a rhythm or conditioned reflex situation.” He added that “on the day of the assassination, Oswald hit two out of three shots, a 67% proficiency rating. So he was shooting
below
his average for rapid fire on that day.”
²⁰³

And so, despite the erroneous claims of the conspiracy theorists, the evidence is very clear that Oswald, with his background with a rifle, had plenty of time to accurately fire two out of three shots in the 8.4 seconds available to him and at the intervals suggested by the various studies of the Zapruder film.

And let’s not forget that at the time Oswald hit Kennedy with his two shots, Kennedy was relatively close, around fifty-nine yards for the shot that hit him in the back and around eighty-eight yards for the shot in the head.
²⁰⁴
‡
Qualifying with a rifle in the Marines starts at two hundred yards (in the infantry at one hundred), and proceeds to three hundred, then five hundred. And, as I demonstrated for the London jury by my questioning of Monty Lutz, Kennedy was “almost a stationary target.”

Major Eugene D. Anderson, assistant head of the Marksmanship Branch of the Marine Corps, testified before the Warren Commission that based on Oswald’s record in the Marines, the shot to the president’s head was “not a particularly difficult shot” and “Oswald had full capabilities to make such a shot.”
²⁰⁵
Sergeant James A. Zahm, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the Marksmanship Training Unit at the Marine Corps school in Quantico, Virginia, told the Warren Commission that compared to the average civilian in America, Oswald was “an excellent shot.” Even in the Marine Corps, Oswald would be considered to be “a good shot, slightly above average.” Zahm went on to say that he considered the shot from the sniper’s nest that hit Kennedy in the back to be a “very easy shot” and the later one that struck him in the head “an easy shot” for a man with the equipment Oswald had and with his ability.”
²⁰⁶

Finally, when you stop to think about it, the standard argument made by conspiracy theorists that what Oswald accomplished demonstrated incredible marksmanship on his part (a marksmanship, they say, he did not possess) is further refuted by the fact that he really hit his “target” not two out of three times,
but only one out of three times
. What
was
Oswald’s target? It could only be Kennedy’s head. I mean, we have to assume that Oswald was aiming at Kennedy’s head when he fired all three shots since that would be the most vulnerable (and, if hit, fatal) part of Kennedy’s body. It makes no sense that Oswald would be aiming to hit Kennedy in his back. In addition to the back being far less vulnerable than the head, very little of Kennedy’s back was visible to Oswald, being hidden by the backseat of the limousine. So with Kennedy’s head being the target, Oswald’s first shot not only missed the target, but also completely missed the limousine; his second shot also missed the target (Kennedy’s head) when it struck Kennedy in the back; only his third shot hit the target, Kennedy’s head. I ask the conspiracy theorists, How can hitting your target only one out of three times, particularly when your target is relatively close and essentially stationary, be considered incredibly great marksmanship, as you’ve been successfully peddling to the American public for over forty years?

T
he Zapruder film has also proved useful to official investigators in determining the location from which the gunfire came in Dealey Plaza and the trajectory of the bullets. By combining information about the location and track of the wounds (as determined by the autopsy of the president and the postoperative reports on the governor) with the relative positions of Kennedy and Connally as seen in the Zapruder film, both the Warren Commission and the HSCA sought to establish the location of the assassin, though the Warren Commission’s tests were more about proving Oswald’s involvement and validating the single-bullet theory than determining the source of the gunfire.

Since the Warren Commission had already found that the “cumulative evidence of eyewitnesses, firearms and ballistic experts and medical authorities demonstrated that the shots were fired from above and behind President Kennedy and Governor Connally, more particularly, from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository,” the Commission’s trajectory analysis was only designed to ensure that all data was “consistent” with this premise.
²⁰⁷
At the Commission’s request, the FBI and the Secret Service conducted an elaborate reenactment of the assassination in Dealey Plaza on May 24, 1964, using the 1958 Secret Service Cadillac follow-up car (which is similar in design to the actual 1961 Lincoln presidential limousine, which was being remodeled),
*
stand-ins for the president and governor (played by FBI agents with approximately the same physical characteristics), and Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. The rifle was outfitted with a camera (to photograph the view the assassin had through the telescopic sight) and mounted on a tripod in the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository Building. The locations of the president’s and governor’s back wounds (as determined by the medical evidence) were circled in chalk on the back suit coats of the stand-ins. The agents ascertained that the foliage of the oak tree between a gunman in the sniper’s nest and his target was “practically the same” on May 24, 1964, as it was when photographs were taken on December 5, just two weeks after the assassination.

Using frames from the Zapruder film (as well as the Nix and Muchmore films), investigators attempted to match, as closely as possible, the positions of their mock car and stand-ins with the positions of the president’s limousine and occupants as seen at various points in the films. As these alignments were completed, a straight line from the telescopic sight at the window through the chalk-marked wounds of Kennedy and Connally became very evident when the car was at the location recorded in Zapruder frames 210–225. A surveyor’s sighting equipment then measured the angle of declination from the rifle in the window to the entrance point on the back of the president’s stand-in to be 21.34 degrees at Zapruder frame 210 and 20.11 degrees at Z225, giving an average angle of 20.52 degrees. Allowing for the 3.9-degree downward slope of Elm Street, the Commission concluded that the probable downward angle of the bullet at impact was 17.43 degrees. (The angle of declination for the fatal shot to the president’s head was determined to be approximately 15.25 degrees.) The tests led the Warren Commission to conclude that the trajectory of the bullet that passed through the president and struck Governor Connally, and that of the bullet that hit the president in the head, were consistent with Oswald’s believed position in the southeasternmost window of the sixth floor of the Book Depository.
²⁰⁸